the full measure and complement of happiness where the boundless appetite of that spirit remains compleatly satisfied that it can neither desire addition nor alteration that I think is truly Heaven and this can onely be in the injoyment of that essence whose infinite goodness is able to terminate the desires of it self and the unsatiable wishes of ours wherever God will thus manifest himself there is Heaven though within the circle of this sensible world Thus the Soul of man may be in Heaven any where even within the limits of his own proper body and when it ceaseth to live in the body it may remain in its own soul that is its Creator And thus we may say that St. Paul whether in the body or out of the body was yet in Heaven To place it in the Empyreal or beyond the tenth sphear is to forget the worlds destruction for when this sensible world shall be destroyed all shall then be here as it is now there an Empyreal Heaven a quasi vacuity when to ask where Heaven is is to demand where the Presence of God is or where we have the glory of that happy vision Moses that was bred up in all the learning of the Egyptians committed a gross absurdity in Philosophy when with these eyes of flesh he desired to see God and petitioned his Maker that is truth it self to a contradiction Those that imagine Heaven and Hell neighbours and conceive a vicinity between those two extreams upon consequence of the Parable where Dives discoursed with Lazarus in Abraham's bosome do too grosly conceive of those glorified creatures whose eyes shall easily out-see the Sun and behold without a perspective the extreamest distances for if there shall be in our glorified eyes the faculty of sight and reception of objects I could think the visible species there to be in as unlimitable a way as now the intellectual I grant that two bodies placed beyond the tenth sphear of in a vacuity according to Aristotle's Philosophy could not behold each other because there wants a body or Medium to hand and transport the visible rays of the object unto the sense but when there shall be a general defect of either Medium to convey or light to prepare and dispose that Medium and yet a perfect vision we must suspend the rules of our Philosophy and make all good by a more absolute piece of opticks I cannot tell how to say that fire is the essence of Hell I know not what to make of Purgatory * or conceive a flame that can either prey upon or purifie the substance of a Soul those flames of sulphur mention'd in the Scriptures I take not to be understood of this present Hell but of that to come where fire shall make up the complement of our tortures and have a body or subject wherein to manifest its tyranny Some who have had the honour to be textuary in Divinity are of opinion it shall be the same specifical fire with ours This is hard to conceive yet can I make good how even that may prey upon our bodies and yet not consume us for in this material World there are bodies that persist invincible in the powerfullest flames and though by the action of fire they fall into ignition and liquation yet will they never suffer a destruction I would gladly know how Moses with an actual fire calcin'd or burnt the Golden Calf unto powder for that mystical metal of Gold whose solary and celestial nature I admire exposed unto the violence of fire grows onely hot and liquifies but consumaeth not so when the consumble and volatile pieces of our bodies shall be refined into a more impregnable and fixed temper like Gold though they suffer from the actions of flames they shall never perish but lye immortal in the arms of fire And surely if this frame must suffer onely by the action of this element there will many bodies escape and not onely Heaven but Earth will not be at an end but rather a beginning For at present it is not earth but a composition of fire water earth and air but at that time spoiled of these ingredients it shall appear in a substance more like it self its ashes Philosophers that opinioned the worlds destruction by fire did never dream of annihilation which is beyond the power of sublunary causes for the last action of that element is but vitrification or a reduction of a body into glass and therefore some of our Chymicks facetiously affirm that at the last fire all shall be christallized and reverberated into glass which is the utmost action of that element Nor need we fear this term annihilation or wonder that God will destroy the works of his Creation for man subsisting who is and will then truely appear a Microcosm the world cannot be said to be destroyed For the eyes of God and perhaps also of our glorified selves shall as really behold and contemplate the World in its Epitome or contracted essence as now it doth at large and in its dilated substance in the seed of a Plant to the eyes of God and to the understanding of man there exists though in an invisible way the perfect leaves flowers and fruit thereof for things that are in posse to the sense are actually existent to the understanding Thus God beholds all things who contemplates as fully his works in their Epitome as in their full volume and beheld as amply the whole world in that little compendium of the sixth day as in the scattered and dilated pieces of those five before Sect. 51 Men commonly set forth the torments of Hell by fire and the extremity of corporal afflictions and describe Hell in the same method that Mahomet doth Heaven This indeed makes a noise and drums in popular ears but if this be the terrible piece thereof it is not worthy to stand in diameter with Heaven whose happiness consists in that part that is best able to comprehend it that immortal essence that translated divinity and colony of God the Soul Surely though we place Hell under Earth the Devil's walk and purlue is about it men speak too popularly who place it in those flaming mountains which to grosser apprehensions represent Hell The heart of man is the place the Devils dwell in I feel sometimes a Hell within my self Lucifer keeps his Court in my breast Legion is revived in me * There are as many Hells as Anaxagoras conceited worlds there was more than one Hell in Magdalene when there were seven Devils for every Devil is an Hell unto himself he holds enough of torture in his own ubi and needs not the misery of circumference to afflict him And thus a distracted Conscience here is a shadow or introduction unto Hell hereafter Who can but pity the merciful intention of those hands that do destroy themselves the Devil were it in his power would do the like which being impossible his miseries are endless and he suffers most in that attribute wherein
I chuse for my devotions but * our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted understandings that they forget the story and can only relate to our awaked souls a confused and broken tale of that that hath passed Aristotle who hath written a singular Tract of Sleep hath not methinks throughly defined it nor yet Galen though he seem to have corrected it for those Noctambuloes and night-walkers though in their sleep do yet injoy the action of their senses we must therefore say that there is something in us that is not in the jurisdiction of Morpheus and that those abstracted and ecstatick souls do walk about in their own corps as spirits with the bodies they assume wherein they seem to hear and feel though indeed the Organs are destitute of sense and their natures of those faculties that should inform them Thus it is observed that men sometimes upon the hour of their departure do speak and reason above themselves For then the soul beginning to be freed from the ligaments of the body begins to reason like her self and to discourse in a strain above mortality Sect. 12 We tearm sleep a death and yet it is waking that kills us and destroys those spirits that are the house of life 'T is indeed a part of life that best expresseth death for every man truely lives so long as he acts his nature or some way makes good the faculties of himself Themistocles therefore that slew his Soldier in his sleep was a merciful Executioner 't is a kind of punishment the mildness of no laws hath invented * I wonder the fancy of Lucan and Seneca did not discover it It is that death by which we may be literally said to dye daily a death which Adam dyed before his mortality a death whereby we live a middle and moderating point between life and death in fine so like death I dare not trust it without my prayers and an half adieu unto the World and take my farewel in a Colloquy with God The night is come like to the day Depart not thou great God away Let not my sins black as the night Eclipse the lustre of thy light Keep still in my Horizon for to me The Sun makes not the day but thee Thou whose nature cannot sleep On my temples centry keep Guard me ' gainst those watchful foes Whose eyes are open while mine close Let no dreams my head infest But such as Jacob''s temples blest While I do rest my Soul advance Make my sleep a holy trance That I may my rest being wrought Awake into some holy thought And with as active vigour run My course as doth the nimble Sun Sleep is a death O make me try By sleeping what it is to die And as gently lay my head On my grave as now my bed Howere I rest great God let me Awake again at least with thee And thus assur'd behold I lie Securely or to awake or die These are my drowsie days in vain I do now wake to sleep again O come that hour when I shall never Sleep again but wake for ever This is the Dormative I take to bedward I need no other Laudanum than this to make me sleep after which I close mine eyes in security content to take my leave of the Sun and sleep unto the resurrection Sect. 13 The method I should use in distributive Justice I often observe in commutative and keep a Geometrical proportion in both whereby becoming equable to others I become unjust to my self and supererogate in that common principle Do unto others as then wouldst he done unto thy self I was not born unto riches neither is it I think my Star to be wealthy or if it were the freedom of my mind and frankness of my disposition were able to contradict and cross my fates For to me avarice seems not so much a vice as a deplorable piece of madness * to conceive our selves Urinals or be perswaded that we are dead is not so ridiculous nor so many degrees beyond the power of Hellebore as this The opinion of Theory and positions of men are not so void of reason as their practised conclusions some have held that Snow is black that the earth moves that the Soul is air fire water but all this is Philosophy and there is no delirium if we do but speculate the folly and indisputable dotage of avarice to that subterraneous Idol and God of the Earth I do confess I am an Atheist I cannot perswade my self to honour that the World adores whatsoever vertue its prepared substance may have within my body it hath no influence nor operation without I would not entertain a base design or an action that should call me villain for the Indies and for this only do I love and honour my own soul and have methinks two arms too few to embrace my self Aristotle is too severe that will not allow us to be truely liberal without wealth and the bountiful hand of Fortune if this be true I must confess I am charitable only in my liberal intentions and bountiful well-wishes But if the example of the Mite be not only an act of wonder but an example of the noblest Charity surely poor men may also build Hospitals and the rich alone have not erected Cathedrals I have a private method which others observe not I take the opportunity of my self to do good I borrow occasion of Charity from mine own necessities and supply the wants of others when I am in most need my self for it is an honest stratagem to make advantage of our selves and so to husband the acts of vertue that where they were defective in one circumstance they may repay their want and multiply their goodness in another I have not Peru in my desires but a competence and ability to perform those good works to which he hath inclined my nature He is rich who hath enough to be charitable and it is hard to be so poor that a noble mind may not find a way to this piece of goodness He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord there is more Rhetorick in that one sentence than in a Library of Sermons and indeed if those Sentences were understood by the Reader with the same Emphasis as they are delivered by the Author we needed not those Volumes of instructions but might be honest by an Epitome Upon this motive only I cannot behold a Beggar without relieving his Necessities with my Purse or his Soul with my Prayers these scenical and accidental differences between us cannot make me forget that common and untoucht part of us both there is under these Cantoes and miserable outsides these mutilate and semi bodies a soul of the same alloy with our own whose Genealogy is Gods as well as ours and is as fair a way to Salvation as our selves Statists that labour to contrive a Common-wealth without our poverty take away the object of charity not understanding only the Common wealth of Christian but
sunt inter Haereticos deputandi Aug. cont Manich. 24. qu. 3. Sect. 9 Pag. 16 The deepest mysteries that ours contains have not only been illustrated but maintained by Syllogism and the Rule of Reason and since this Book was written by Mr. White in his Institutiones Sacrae And when they have seen the Red Sea doubt not of the Miracle Those that have seen it have been better informed than Sir Henry Blount was for he tells us That he desired to view the passage of Moses into the Red Sea not being above three days journey off but the Jews told him the precise place was not known within less than the space of a days journey along the shore wherefore saith he I left that as too uncertain for any Observation In his Voyage into the Levant Sect. 10 Pag. 19 I had as lieve you tell me that Anima est Angelus hominis est corpus Dei as Entelechia Lux est umbra Dei as actus perspoicui Great variety of opinion there hath been amongst the Ancient Philosophers touching the definition of the Soul Thales his was that it is a Nature without Repose Asclepiades that it is an Exercitation of Sense Hesiod that it is a thing composed of Earth and Water Parmenides holds of Earth and Fire Galen that it is Heat Hippocrates that it is a spirit diffused through the body Some others have held it to be Light Plato saith 't is a Substance moving it self and after him cometh Aristotle whom the Author here reproveth and goeth a degree farther and saith it is Entelechia that is that which naturally makes the body to move But this definition is as rigid as any of the other for this tells us not what the essence origine or nature of the soul is hut only marks an effect of it and therefore signifieth no more than if he had said as the Author's Phrase is that it is Angelus hominis or an Intelligence that moveth man as he supposed those other to do the Heavens Now to come to the definition of Light in which the Author is also unsatisfied with the School of Aristotle he saith It satisfieth him no more to tell him that Lux est actus perspicui than if you should tell him that it is umbra Dei The ground of this definition given by the Peripateticks is taken from a passage in Aristot de anima l. 2. cap. 7. where Aristtotle saith That the colour of the thing seen doth move that which is perspicuum actu i.e. illustratam naturam quae sit in aere aliove corpore transparente and that that in regard of its continuation to the eye moveth the eye and by its help the internal sensorium and that so vision is perform'd Now as it is true that the Sectators of Aristotle are too blame by fastening up on-him by occasion of this passage that he meant that those things that made this impress upon the Organs are meer accidents and have nothing of substance which is more than ever he meant and cannot be maintained without violence to Reason and his own Principles so for Aristotle himself no man is beholden to him for any Science acquir'd by this definition for what is any man the near for his telling him that Colour admitting it to be a body as indeed it is and in that place he doth not deny doth move actu perspicuum when as the perspicuity is in relation to the eye and he doth not say how it comes to be perspicuous which is the thing enquired after but gives it that denomination before the eye hath perform'd its office so that if he had said it had been umbra Dei it would have been as intelligible as what he hath said He that would be satisfied how Vision is perform'd let him see Mr. Hobbs in Tract de nat human cap. 2. For God had not caused it to rain upon the Earth St. Aug. de Genes ad literam cap. 5. 6. salves that expression from any inconvenience but the Author in Pseudodox Epidemic l. 7. cap. 1. shews that we have no reason to be confident that this fruit was an Apple I believe that the Serpent if we shall literally understand it from his proper form and figure made his motion on his belly before the curse Yet the Author himself sheweth in Pseudodox Epidemic lib. 7 cap 1. that the form or kind of this Serpent is not agreed on yet Comestor affirm'd it was a Dragon Eugubinus a Basilisk Delrio a Viper and others a common Snake but of what kind soever it was he sheweth in the same Volume lib. 5. c. 4. that there was no inconvenience that the Temptation should be perform'd in his proper shape I find the tryal of the Pucelage and virginity of Women which God ordained the Jews is very fallible Locus extat Deut. c. 22. the same is affirm'd by Laurentius in his Anatom Whole Nations have escaped the curse of Child-birth which God seems to pronounce upon the whole sex This is attested by Mr. Montaign Les doleurs de l'enfantiment par les medicines pardein mosme estimles grandes quae nous pasons avec tant de Cetemonies ily a des notions entieres qui ne'n fuit mul conte l. 1. des Ess c. 14. Sect. 11 Pag. 21 Who can speak of Eternity without a Soloecism or think thereof without an Extasie Time we may comprehend c. Touching the difference betwixt Eternity and Time there have been great disputes amongst Philosophers some affirming it to be no more than duration perpetual consisting of parts and others to which opinion it appears by what follows in this Section the Author adheres affirmed to use the Author's phrase that it hath no distinction of Tenses but is according to Boetius lib. 5. consol pros 6. his definition interminabilis vitae tota simul perfecta possessio For me Non nostrum est tantas componere lites I shall only observe what each of them hath to say against the other Say those of the first opinion against those that follow Boetius his definition That definition was taken by Boetius out of Plato's Timaeus and is otherwise applyed though hot by Boetius yet by those that follow him than ever Plato intended it for he did not take it in the Abstract but in the Concrete for an eternal thing a Divine substance by which he meant God or his Anima mundi and this he did to the intent to establish this truth That no mutation can befal the Divine Majesty as it doth to things subject to generation and corruption and that Plato there intended not to define or describe any species of duration and they say that it is impossible to understand any such species of duration that is according to the Author's expression but one permanent point Now that which those that follow Boetius urge against the other definition is they say it doth not at all difference Eternity from the nature of Time for they say if it be composed